Nathaniel Hone the Elder
Irish painter Nathaniel Hone the Elder (1718-1784) was a founding member of the British Royal Academy, but he eventually ran afoul of it. This was because he was jealous of the Academy’s first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), and openly mocked Reynolds in his painting The Conjuror.
Reynolds was famous in his day - and still is now - for developing a new style of portrait painting that made portraiture almost as significant as history painting. One of the ways he did this was by incorporating lots of references to the old masters. Too many, in Hone’s opinion. He showed Reynolds as a sorcerer conjuring up new paintings out of old master prints. Basically, he suggested that Reynolds was a charlatan who relied on stealing from the masters to create his paintings. Hone was quite precise with his critique. He showed prints depicting works that Reynolds had actually referenced in his paintings, and he used one of Reynolds’s frequent models to play the conjuror.
As if this weren’t controversial enough, the Academy believed that the painting also made fun of another member - Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807). The little girl in the image is probably meant to be Kauffman, a successful portrait and history painter who may have once had a relationship with Reynolds. And then, there was the group of nude figures. Originally located in the painting’s upper left-hand corner, they were shown frolicking outside Saint Paul’s in London. This was supposedly a reference to the Academy members, including Reynolds and Kauffman, who were painting frescos for Saint Paul’s at that time. One of these figures, a woman wearing only black stockings, was interpreted as a lewd representation of Kauffman. The Academy was so insulted by this (and, presumably, by the rest of the painting), that it rejected the work from the Academy’s official exhibition. Hone claimed that he hadn’t meant the nude woman to be Kauffman, and replaced the entire grouping with some sedate and fully-clothed men. If you’re curious, though, you can see the scandalous original version in his sketch for the painting, now at the Tate Britain.
- Alexandra Kiely
P.S. Check these 4 cutest Joshua Reynolds’ children portraits!